Intimate

The introductory text A Move To Acquiescence in Intimate is written by Robin Titchener, a renowned UK based photobook collector and reviewer. The essay The Topography of Loss is written by the book’s editor Rosamund Brennan, an Australian art writer and editor published in The Guardian, Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera.

A pool of sweat shimmers across a commuter’s forehead. Anguished faces gape into the blinding sun. Women and men in suits dart beneath the awning of a construction site, walking in unison but somehow entirely unaware of each other, ensconced within their own oblivion.

Pulverised light seeps into every crack and crevice, exposing furrowed brows, blemishes and worry lines – those strangely beautiful features that philosopher Umberto Eco referred to as the “infinite ugliness”. Scurrying through the arteries of the city, these nameless faces appear to be searching for something elliptical, something just out of reach. Like entering a room with great purpose, and at once forgetting why you are there.

As if emerging from a dream, eidetic visions of the environment speckle the urban landscapes. Shafts of light filter through a motionless forest, rain casts concentric circles over a body of water; summoning a feeling of tenderness, a nostalgia for the gentle poetry and serenity of nature.

A cinematic meditation on nature and civilisation, Markus Andersen’s Intimate plunges us into minutiae of urban life in Sydney. Using a telephoto lens, he carves a silent path through the city, capturing a procession of nameless faces, their expressions blown up and immortalised in black and white.

“I shoot fast, take the frame and move. I guess it’s like trying to capture lightning in a bottle,” Andersen says. Shot in extreme close-up and drenched in sunlight, his moody, monochromatic images transmit the full spectrum of human emotion. The inner battles, the hidden vulnerabilities, are laid bare for all to see. Masterfully juxtaposing street photography with tender portraits of the environment, Andersen evokes a bittersweet sense of nostalgia, of disconnection, and denial.

At once mesmeric and beckoning, Intimate transports us to the dark heart of urbanisation and our seemingly limitless appetite for destruction. In doing so, he sheds light on our dormant yearnings to be reacquainted with the natural world and, ultimately, our complicity in its demise.

Markus Andersen has a significant exhibition profile with solo and collaborative shows held in New York, Paris, Toronto, Istanbul, United Kingdom and Sydney. His work has been the subject of two publications, Cabramatta – A Moment in Time and Rage Against the Light, both produced by T&G Publishing.